Site Mobile Navigation

FILM; Ben Affleck Shocker: I Bargained With Devil for Fame

THE door of the Hollywood Hills Cafe opens and Ben Affleck appears like an usher remembered from a 3 a.m. awakening in some all-night moviehouse. You sort of expect him to have a flashlight in his hand as he points you toward the back room, a dim alcove with the faintly menacing air of a Capone-era speakeasy. ''If you say the code word,'' he jokes, ''you can go in and they'll serve you gin.''

Mr. Affleck fires up a Camel Light with an elbow-cocked rakishness that William Powell might envy. ''There are very draconian smoking laws in Los Angeles,'' he says, sheepishly. ''I hate smoking. It's a terrible thing.''

Dressed in dharma-bum blue denim, eyes daring and mischievous, the 28-year-old actor puffs and puffs and ponders his place in the tabloid pantheon. Since wafting into the public consciousness three years ago in ''Good Will Hunting'' -- a film for which he shared a screenwriting Oscar with his co-star and Little League teammate, Matt Damon -- Mr. Affleck has emerged as one of Hollywood's major heart flutters. When his new romantic drama, ''Bounce,'' is released on Oct. 13, cardiologists across the country will be on call.

The supermarket press has spied Mr. Affleck buying out the condoms in a 7-Eleven in Wisconsin, and affianced him to innumerable actresses, some of whom he has even met. His on-again, off-again entanglement with his ''Bounce'' co-star, Gwyneth Paltrow -- this week off -- was the subject of more speculation than the last Mideast peace summit meeting.

''Tabloid stories are what I imagine patients' diaries are like in lunatic asylums,'' says Mr. Affleck. ''They're always about storming out of rooms and falling in love with 17 different people.'' He inhales deeply, crushes out his cigarette, shreds a paper napkin. Well aware that being too famous is not the sort of personal problem that elicits much sympathy, Mr. Affleck shrugs: ''Those of us who have agreed to this Faustian bargain deserve our drubbings at the hands of the Fourth Estate. We entered into the agreement willingly.''

Mr. Affleck gets drubbed all the time -- most recently for cracking that Ms. Paltrow is ''actually the funny, down-to-earth fat girl in the beautiful girl's body.''

He sweeps the napkin bits into a pile, lights another Camel, exhales deeply: ''I hesitate to elaborate for fear of another pounding at the hands of fat girls offended by the assumption that they are either funny or down-to-earth.'' Laughing gleefully, he rends another napkin. ''I apologize. Fat people can be just as aloof and dull as center-of-the-bell-curve-shaped people.''

A 6-foot-3-inch buffed block of granite with a top-heavy build that leaves his arms hanging wide, Mr. Affleck is hardly aloof and anything but dull. Though he seems like the smart-aleck towel-snapper you avoided in gym class, he is, by Mr. Damon's account, ''charismatic, loyal, a fantastic storyteller and a great friend who can laugh even when things go terribly, terribly wrong.''

Ms. Paltrow demurs. ''I know what Matt means,'' she says. ''Ben is affable and charming and people are sort of drawn to him. But to me, the movie character he's closer to is Will Hunting: they're both disarmingly quick, fiercely intelligent and, in some ways, underachievers. Though Ben had almost perfect SAT scores in high school, his grades varied wildly depending on his attendance and level of interest.'' By his own account, Mr. Affleck was often absent and mostly uninterested.

''There's a huge chasm between the public and the private Bens,'' Ms. Paltrow says. ''In quiet moments, Jocular Ben transforms into Contemplative Ben. He's not vulnerable right away; it takes ages to get to that part of him. I like him in all his incarnations.''

Born in Berkeley, Calif., Mr. Affleck grew up a block and a half from Mr. Damon in Cambridge, Mass. Perhaps inspired by a television doctor-drama, Chris and Tim Affleck named their sons Ben and Casey. (Casey, also an actor, can be forever grateful his parents weren't Marcus Welby fans.)

Chris taught school, and Tim performed in the Theater Company of Boston with Dustin Hoffman, Robert Duvall and Blythe Danner, Ms. Paltrow's mother.

''James Woods told me that my father got him into acting,'' Ben says. ''He said, 'I was at M.I.T. and your dad advised me to go for it.' I called Dad, who said, 'The way I remember it, I told him he should finish college.' ''

An aspiring playwright, Tim had briefly dropped out of his Rhode Island high school to make a pilgrimage to Rowan Oak, the home of William Faulkner.

''It's a famous family story,'' Ben says. ''My dad drove down to Oxford, Miss., got directions at a general store and knocked on Faulkner's door. When a guy appeared, my dad said, 'Hey, are you William Faulkner?' The guy, badly hung over, asked, 'Are you a writer?' Dad shook his head no, and Faulkner said, 'All right then, come on in.' ''

Tim Affleck's life has also been clouded by alcoholism. He bounced from job to odd job -- working construction, mopping floors at Harvard -- the same career moves Will Hunting later made. Ben's parents divorced when he was 11, and his mother raised the boys on her own. ''Ben had a difficult childhood, but not a nightmarish one,'' Ms. Paltrow says. ''He loves both his parents dearly.''

Ben's father stopped drinking in 1990, and he now works as a counselor at an alcohol-rehabilitation center in California. ''The most enduring lesson my father taught me is the degree to which it's possible to change your life and patterns,'' he says with a humility befitting a lifelong Red Sox fan. ''It gives me hope that with the right amount of work and discipline, I can address and remedy some of the things I don't like very much about myself.''

Biz, as his friends called him, sprang half-formed into acting. By 14, he had landed roles in everything from a PBS science series to Burger King commercials. ''I pushed to do as much as my mother would let me,'' he says. ''She was worried that I wouldn't become a normal person. She wanted me to be a history teacher.''

Ms. Affleck stashed her son's earnings in a college trust fund. Ben had other ideas for the swag, and, at 15, conned bank tellers into allowing him to sign withdrawal chits. ''I spent $200 a week on pizza, beer and video games,'' he recalls. ''I'd intercept the monthly bank statements and hide them under my mattress.''

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

The scheme unraveled one day when Ms. Affleck changed her son's sheets. ''I don't know which was more embarrassing,'' Mr. Affleck says. ''Was it the fact that Mom had discovered the bank statements or that she had changed my sheets?''

Convinced Ben was a crack addict, she demanded he enter a recovery center. He bargained her down to three weeks in Outward Bound. Mr. Affleck remembers floating down the Colorado River as a raft full of troubled teenagers recited their transgressions. ''One said, 'I assaulted a cop,' '' he says. ''Another said, 'I dealt weed.' Then it was my turn. I said, 'I stole money from myself.' ''

To appease his mother, Mr. Affleck enrolled at the University of Vermont. He quit after one semester and headed west to become an actor. His ascent was not unfettered. Typecast as a lamebrained lummox, he couldn't seem to catch a break. He had lots of small parts in lots of small films, including ''School Ties'' (Mr. Affleck as a bullying preppy), ''Dazed and Confused'' (Mr. Affleck as a bullying druggie) and ''Mallrats'' (Mr. Affleck as a bullying bully).

He made a modest dash to daylight as the sweet-natured, lesbian-loving cartoonist in the 1997 indie hit ''Chasing Amy.'' ''I had to find a way to make people think I could be a leading man,'' he says. ''Otherwise, I'd never get the girl.''

Though he never got Amy, he did get an Academy Award for ''Good Will Hunting.'' The back story has become as much a part of Hollywood lore as Lana Turner and the drugstore: in 1992, Mr. Damon wrote a short story for a class at Harvard, abandoned his studies and moved to a two-bedroom house in Los Angeles. One night Mr. Affleck, having been dumped by his girlfriend, showed up with all his belongings and became part of the couch. Together, they turned the short story into a screenplay, then jeopardized the sale by insisting that only they could play the leads. Castle Rock bought the script and dumped it; Miramax swooped in and made it.

Mr. Damon played Will Hunting, a mathematics prodigy; Mr. Affleck, his wisecracking sidekick, Chuckie. ''We always thought of Chuckie as kind of the Mercutio character,'' Mr. Affleck says. ''He got to do all the fun stuff.'' The actors' friendship infused the film: their best scenes are boyish badinage.

''The success of the film changed the way Hollywood looked at Ben,'' Mr. Damon says. ''Suddenly, he was the bronzed god in 'Armageddon' who flew into outer space to blow up an asteroid. It was hilarious.''

The joke wasn't lost on Mr. Affleck. ''I've made mistakes because I was trying to do something different and interesting,'' he says. ''I don't suffer so much from lazy choices as probably overthinking.''

Ms. Paltrow, who first worked with Mr. Affleck in ''Shakespeare in Love,'' suggests he may not be overthinking as much as underestimating. ''Ben doesn't take the roles that would challenge him most,'' she laments, ''nor does he appear in the films that would take him closest to his emotional fabric.''

She isn't afraid to name names. Besides ''Armageddon,'' she fingers ''Forces of Nature'' and Disney's ''Pearl Harbor,'' a $135 million machine-gun wedding of ''From Here to Eternity'' and ''Saving Private Ryan'' that will open in May. ''Those films don't push Ben, make him expand as an actor,'' Ms. Paltrow says. ''He's capable of so much more.''

It was Ms. Paltrow who persuaded Mr. Affleck to do ''Bounce,'' a film about a swinging ad executive who gives a man his seat on a flight that later crashes, and then falls in love with the victim's widow. ''Gwyneth wrassled him into it,'' says the director, Don Roos. ''She brought Ben the script and read it through with him. I think he only signed on because she wanted him to.''

Mr. Roos may be onto something. ''At first, I thought my character was too old for me,'' Mr. Affleck says. ''But Gwyneth made a convincing pitch. She said, 'I know you can do this, and I want other people to know you can do this.' ''

MR. AFFLECK brings more than a melting smile to the adman, Buddy Amaral. And he achieves a close give-and-take with Ms. Paltrow; he actually listens to his co-star, and he listens with the whole tilt of his body. ''In their scenes together, Ben really looks like he's in love with Gwyneth,'' Mr. Roos coos. ''I don't know, maybe it's not love. It's definitely not the way he looks at me.''

Or Mr. Damon, for that matter. ''We're just friends,'' Mr. Affleck says, deadpan. ''We root for each other and enjoy each other's successes. It's what makes us great business partners.'' Among their many joint projects are an Internet screenplay contest and an HBO adaptation of Howard Zinn's contrarian book ''A People's History of the United States.'' ''We don't plan to act in it,'' Mr. Affleck says. ''Our role is producorial.''

Producorial?

''It's like professorial except it requires no accreditation, no intelligence and no actual expertise, which is why we qualify.''

Arching his back and waving languidly toward a waitress, Mr. Affleck exposes a smeary splotch on his right shoulder. ''I was 16,'' he says, blushing. ''I got a fake ID, went out and got a tattoo of barbed wire. Then I decided I didn't like the tattoo.'' He had roses etched over the barbed wire. ''I decided I didn't like the roses, either.'' Hence, the splotch.

''You get to be my age, there's real pressure -- family pressure, peer pressure -- to start thinking about marriage, kids and all that stuff,'' he says. ''I want to make sure I take that decision very seriously, and not before I'm ready. Whenever I think something's not to be taken lightly, I just look down at my arm and remember how different my frame of mind was when I got the tattoo.''